


Lost and Gone Are Two Different Things

by Nenagh24 (EverFascinated)



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Gen, Lost Things AU, No beta we die like Claudia, One Shot, Pre-Relationship, Soulmates, and Peter respects that (possibly more than Stiles does), because Stiles is way too young to make that decision, like WAY pre-relationship, of Claudia, possibly platonic possibly romantic, who can tell it's like a decade away from any true relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-22
Updated: 2021-02-22
Packaged: 2021-03-12 15:40:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,165
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29636841
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EverFascinated/pseuds/Nenagh24
Summary: Stiles’ soulmate loses a lot of strange and concerning things, but that’s fine. Stiles will keep everything safe until he gets a chance to get all of it back to them.
Relationships: Claudia Stilinski & Stiles Stilinski, Peter Hale & Stiles Stilinski
Comments: 8
Kudos: 95





	Lost and Gone Are Two Different Things

**Author's Note:**

> Wrote this as a birthday present to me! Congrats on making it another year, myself! lol
> 
> Not beta'd because sometimes self-care is not waiting for edits before posting to get that good, good serotonin!

Stiles couldn't remember when he found out that soulmates would find one another's lost items.

He was sure one of his parents explained it, probably after his mom returned another of his dad's missing things, but it happened so frequently that when he thought back to it they all just blended together.

He did remember when he first asked about why it was _only_ his mom returning the items.

"Because I've learned to never lose anything, my mischief." He still remembered the warm smile she gave him as she crouched down to tweak his nose before continuing in a conspiratorial whisper. "I can teach you if you like."

Stiles thought of his father's rueful looks of relief and grinned at the thought of once again living up to his nickname. It was always incredible when Mom turned to find just the thing Dad was looking for, especially since Dad never had to do the same. Wouldn't it be a fun trick to do the same when he grew up?

And so Stiles perfected the game of never losing anything before he was old enough to start finding his soulmates lost items.

Which was all well and good until the first time he found one of his soulmate's lost belongings.

Sure, he was ecstatic when he saw it on his bedside table one morning as he was getting ready for school. The shiny object stopped him dead in his tracks, one hand still reaching for his backpack while his jaw practically dropped to the floor. 

Stiles knew everything he owned down to the finest detail (a combined product of the remembering game and long stretches of boredom on nights he tried to stay up late enough to greet Dad when he got home) and that bisected steel rectangle thing was absolutely _not his._

His eyes grew wider even as he stood staring at it, almost afraid that if he moved it might vanish like a mirage in the desert. He might have stood there for hours if it weren't for his mom calling up the stairs.

"Stiles? You're going to miss the bus if you don't hurry up!"

That spurred him into shaking off his hesitation much like a dog after a bath. Quickly stepping over, he picked up the cold object and admired the engraved wolves in its sides as an elated smile worked its way on to his face.

This was so cool! He couldn't wait to see the what-

Oh.

Stiles' thoughts ground to a halt when he finally identified the largest flaw in his 'impress his soulmate' plans.

_He had no idea who they were._

His hand slapped to his forehead reflexively, imitating a gesture his father did regularly. Of course, his dad usually remembered to use a hand that wasn't holding something. Not having experienced this unintentionally self-inflicted pain before, Stiles dropped his soulmate's paperweight and hissed more than a few words that would make either of his parents threaten him with a bar of soap (an empty threat so far, but he didn't want to see if they'd ever go through with it).

The blade of the not-paperweight missed his socked toes by an inch and stuck point first into his carpet, efficiently cutting off his cursing as Stiles choked on nothing in surprise. He coughed as the two engraved metal pieces swung down to cover the blade again, stopping in a triangular formation as they were prevented from closing due to the thickness of the carpet.

"What the h-" 

"Stiles! I don't have time to drive you to school today!" Mom's voice cut him off and forced his hand. 

She already knew he wasn't sick because he'd eaten breakfast with her as usual this morning, which meant either running for the bus or trying to bike all the way to his elementary school in the rain.

"Coming!" He called back, crouching to try and carefully grab the knife. Leaving it would mean questions about having a weapon, another strange lecture from Dad about how having a soulmate doesn't mean that the other person is safe or sane, or worse - both. He wedged it into his bookbag and made sure it wouldn't open unexpectedly before hurrying downstairs. 

His mom handed him his umbrella as he pushed his feet into his sneakers.

"I'll pick you up this afternoon so you can help me pick out what we're having for dinner this week, alright?"

"Yep, thanks!" Stiles grabbed the umbrella and made for the door before, but only got a step or two away before he realized that it wasn't coming with him. He turned just in time to see her leaning down to his cheek. "Mom! Come on!"

She gave him another kiss on his opposite cheek as if to show that complaints would just earn him more before letting the umbrella go with a smile.

"Have fun at school!" Her voice followed him out into the rain as he jogged towards the bus stop. 

(He made it with a whole minute to spare and thoughtfully shared his umbrella with others before the bus arrived, forcing them all to jump back to avoid getting splashed.)

The school day passed slowly. His soulmate's knife was burning a, thankfully metaphorical, hole in his backpack, but he knew couldn't take it out because the school had a 'no weapons policy' and the teachers were already watching him because they weren't smart enough to clarify that small firecrackers were considered weapons _before_ he snuck a few in to show to his friends last week.

Not being able to look at it to try and figure out who it belonged to made Stiles jittery. His toe and finger tapping in turn made his teachers watch him closer, which only made him even more antsy. The cycle continued until the final bell rang and he practically vibrated on his way to meet his mom.

It only took her five minutes to make it through the line to pick him up and less than five seconds to notice something was wrong.

"You want to talk about it?" She asked as they slowly made their way off school grounds.

"No." Stiles' answer was short, but not sharp (not like the knife, his soulmate's knife, in his bag, rightThere, WhoAreThey?). He struggled to push the circling questions out of his mind, because he couldn't just take the weapon out now for the same reasons he couldn't leave it at home earlier. With an only slightly shaky sigh, he pushed his bag to his feet and looked at his mom. "Where are we going?"

Mom glanced at him, offering a small smile before looking back at the road.

"Quick stop at the post office and then to the grocery store. Shouldn't take more than an hour, promise."

Nodding, Stiles turned to look out the window, biting his lip. His mom was probably wondering where his usual after school questions were, but he could barely remember what they went over today, let alone think of anything he wanted further clarification on.

Thankfully, the post office wasn't too far away. His mom peered out the windshield at the cloudy sky, before deeming it safe enough to crack the windows.

"Do you want to come in with me or would you like to stay in the car? I shouldn't be more than two minutes."

"I'll stay." The answer was maybe a little too quick, but even though his mom raised her brows she didn't ask. Instead she rolled down each of the windows about an inch before getting out of the car.

"I'm locking up, but if you change your mind just be sure to lock the door behind you, alright?" 

He nodded at the usual question, wondering why she thought he always needed to be reminded. He was seven already, nearly eight! He knew what to do! His nerves sizzled with excitement as she made her way to the building, but he waited until after they exchanged a wave, as usual just before she pushed open the door to the post office, before he yanked his backpack back into his lap.

Rifling through it quickly, his fingers found the cool metal under his notebooks and carefully pulled it free. The bag dropped back down between his feet as he ran his fingers over the engraved wolves running down each metal bar. He turned it over and found an identical engraving on the other side.

It was beautiful and entirely unhelpful.

He frowned at the lack of name and then narrowed his eyes. Maybe it was on the blade? Ever so carefully, he pulled one of the protective sides away from the knife only to let it snap shut again as movement outside caught his eye.

His mom just exited the building with a package and was making her way over to the car.

Somehow he managed to get it into his pocket without cutting anything. Nervously, he kicked his school bag under the dashboard just before his mom finished up in the trunk and opened her door to get in.

"What is it?" He asked casually.

Her raised brow told him it was either too casual or not casual enough, but she answered anyway.

"A package for your father."

That didn't tell him anything, but if he pushed and asked more questions she might too. Huffing a little, he crossed his arms and slouched into his seat as they pulled back into traffic.

His annoyance didn't last long, especially not when they finally parked the car and made their way into the grocery store. The knife (his soulmate's knife!) shifted a little inside the pocket of his shorts with each step and for all the nervous energy it spawned it was hard to feel angry on the day he confirmed that he had a soulmate.

Stiles could barely concentrate on what his mom was suggesting for dinner options to the point where she eventually just made the decisions herself and instead simply asked him to fetch one ingredient on the aisle while she got another.

The running back and forth gave him something to do, keeping him from getting too lost in his thoughts which was good. However, when she asked him to get a headstart on the next aisle over and he found the row empty, the temptation was too great.

Stiles made it all the way to what his mom wanted, a bag of noodles, before his fingers found the knife again. Pulling it out, he quickly held it sideways and pulled on the upper flap to see the knife inside. The blade was shiny, even more so than the bands hiding it because it was so very smooth.

He frowned at the flawless finish and angled it towards him to try and see the other side.

"Stiles!" His mom's shocked call nearly made him fumble the knife again and definitely got him to jump guiltily as he turned towards the end of the aisle he'd come from.

The blue eyed young man standing there exchanged a couple of shocked and confused blinks with Stiles before the sound of a cart and quick, familiar footsteps had Stiles turning around to face his mom who was approaching from the other direction.

"Where did you get that?" She asked, worry lining her brow.

"In my room." Stiles offered up the truth defensively before answering what was sure to be the next question. "This morning."

His mom gave him a look that he didn't quite understand. It looked exasperated like when he was being purposefully slow, but he actually answered the question this time!

"And how did it get in your room?" She asked then held out a hand without waiting for his answer. "Hand it over."

Stiles pulled it to his chest automatically, cradling the closed knife carefully in both hands.

"The way all soulmate stuff gets places, I guess." He frowned a little, his eyes dropping from Mom's as he tried to remember if anyone ever explained that to him. He couldn't remember, so that was a really good question. "How does soulmate stuff go from one place to another?"

Looking back at his mom, he stopped short of theorizing out loud when he noticed another complex expression on her face. Her eyebrows were drawn as if upset which contrasted with both her wide shocked eyes and the small smile that twitched as if she were fighting it. Before he could decipher any meaning from that, she closed her eyes and took a deep breath much like he had in the car. When she opened them again, she was once more her usual patient self.

"It's wonderful that you found your soulmate, my mischief, but they're going to want that back."

He frowned before pursing his lips when he realized it was more like a pout than a frown.

"I know. I just don't know who it is so I can't give it back."

"It's both easy and difficult." 

Stiles gave her a look he'd copied from Dad at that unhelpful statement, the one that always made him feel guilty. It didn't work right though because Mom just laughed.

"The easiest way to give it back is to lose it on purpose, which is difficult because it's harder to lose things when you _want_ to lose them." She clarified.

He tried to follow the logic. It felt like a twisting eel in his hands, but eventually he parsed it.

"Like how we never lose things?" That didn't sound exactly right, but it must be along those lines.

"Similar type of thing, but we do it differently. Want me to show you?" At his nod she held out her hand again. "It's easiest when you have someone to help, but you can learn to do it by yourself."

Stiles looked mournfully down at the knife. It was his first item from his soulmate and he kind of wanted to keep it. On the other hand, he knew how frantic his dad got when he couldn't find something he lost and Stiles didn't want his soulmate to worry like that.

He gripped it tighter for a moment before giving in and placing it in his mom's hand.

"Now, turn around and close your eyes." She instructed, waiting a moment before raising her brows and making a shooing motion with her free hand when he didn't turn immediately. "Just like being the one to place your own things makes it easier to not lose them, having others do it for you makes it easier to lose them."

Pressing his lips together, Stiles looked at the knife one last time before doing as he was told. Once he turned, he found the man still standing there watching. He scowled at him, wondering why the man (or was he a teen? He kind of looked around the same age as the neighborhood high schoolers) wanted to watch Stiles lose something. That just got him a smirk so Stiles stuck out his tongue at the older boy before closing his eyes.

"Are they closed?" His mom asked.

" _Yes_." Stiles tried hard not to whine, but he wasn't sure if he managed it. Behind him, he heard bags crinkle, boxes shift, and jars clink as his mom shifted through the shelves.

"Alright, now you can open them and come over here."

He spun around, opening his eyes at the same time. His mom was leaning on her cart and the shelves around her looked the same as they did when they arrived. A beat passed as he inspected them before looking at her uncertainly.

"Now, you try to find it." She smiled at his incredulous look. "I usually find that after looking in three or four places and not finding it Dad will be able to find it near him."

"How do you know?" Stiles thought that she never lost anything!

"That's how I get his lunch to him when he forgets it at home." Her grin invited him to laugh with her at his dad's forgetfulness so he did and her eyes crinkled before she waved to the shelves. "Now, try to find it!"

She watched quietly as he looked in almost ten different locations before he finally asked her where it was. Reaching out, she picked up the bag of pasta she'd asked him to get and showed him the empty space behind it. Reaching out, he felt around the other bags just as he had when he moved the same bag on his sixth try to find the knife, but he couldn't find anything.

"It's back with your soulmate." She assured him, patting his shoulder before turning the cart and leading them back up the aisle to finish their shopping.

He never looked back, but he would be later informed by a reliable source that the teen who'd watched all of this play out waited until just after they left to retrieve his own groceries, a box of breadcrumbs that he'd been standing beside the whole time, along with his butterfly knife which was now sitting just behind it.

Stiles barely thought about him when he was learning how to lose things on purpose, eventually succeeding in sending every one of his soulmate's things back. It was tricky, but so was Stiles. Though, he'd admit that it was a little easier when the lost things trickled off to one or two a month about a year after they started. 

The first time they went a month without sending anything he started to get worried. This worry only increased when the next item he found one weekend while cleaning his room was a bloodstained t-shirt.

Stiles would readily admit that he dropped it as soon as he realized what the crusty, rust brown stains were, but never liked to talk about the strangled noise that followed. 

"Everything alright in there?" His dad called from down the hall.

Swallowing to try and clear the tightness in his throat, Stiles eventually croaked back an affirmative. "Yeah! Got surprised by a bug on the window."

Better he think that then come and see a bloody shirt. Dad might know by now that Stiles had a soulmate, but he was inclined to think the worst of them. He and his mom privately agreed that it must be a cop thing.

"Inside?" His dad asked, sounding a little alarmed.

"No."

"Good, I'd hate to have to find new pest control."

Stiles heaved a sigh of relief at that last mutter then tried to figure out what to do with the shirt. _Of course_ he was sending it back, but should he try to wash it first? How would he know if his soulmate was alright? That was _a lot_ of blood.

He frowned before going to his small desk to rifle through the drawer. There it was! He pulled out a safety pin that was left over from a recent class project before sticking his other hand in to find a clean scrap of paper.

Once he had both, he wrote a careful _'Are you OK?'_ on the yellow construction paper before pinning it to the shirt.

That sending was his fastest yet, Stiles barely had time to look away before the shirt vanished, leaving only the faint smell of old blood behind.

It took almost two weeks of worrying before his soulmate managed to send back a scribbled _'I'm fine'_. Stiles would have felt more relieved if he didn't find it when he was preparing to go to the hospital with his parents.

The note calmed him a little, but it wasn't enough to keep him from jittering in one of the hospital's plastic chairs as he waited in the hall while his parents spoke to a doctor with the glass door shut. He knew it was something big, especially when he watched his mom wipe away a few tears as they all spoke, but the conversation was too muffled for him to understand any of it. Reading lips wasn't a skill he possessed ( _yet_ , it was now topping the list) so he was glad for the distraction as one of the hospital staff spoke up.

"Are you lost?"

Stiles turned to give the person an incredulous look, hand already raising to wave in the direction of his parents when he realized the question wasn't directed at him.

By this time, he hadn't thought of the teen who watched him lose his soulmate's knife in months, but the memory resurfaced when he looked at the confused teen standing in the middle of the hall. They weren't the same as this one was obviously younger, but there was something about him that reminded him of the older boy.

Maybe it was because they kept intruding on personal moments. He scowled a bit as the annoyed thought whispered across his mind. His anger lasted until he glanced back into the office and saw his dad comforting his mom who was sitting with her head in her hands. Worry rushed in and crushed the anger easily, to the point that Stiles barely listened as the older boy asked to call his own mom to get a ride home.

Over the next year, Stiles unintentionally lost items for the first time and he was too grateful to question when exactly his soulmate got so good at sending things back quickly. Trips to the hospital increased until it was just him and his father going back and forth while his mom stayed in one of their rooms.

Sometimes he almost asked his dad why he couldn't find mom's sanity and return it, especially after his mom started screaming about murder, but something about the wounded look his father constantly wore these days stayed his tongue.

Dad just wasn't used to finding things, he rationalized, mom didn't let him practice.

So Stiles quietly started losing little things on purpose - a pen here, a keychain there - and he always felt a little lighter when he'd turn around to find them again.

In the year after his mom passed, they were some of the few bright spots. Especially as his dad mourned, mostly by working a lot and forgetting even more. Stiles had always wondered why anyone would 'drink to forget', but he was beginning to suspect that at least some part of his dad hoped that his mom would show up along with everything else he lost and forgotten.

Unfortunately, life wasn't so kind and Mom never returned.

Instead, Stiles was the one who found his dad's things. He'd bike to the station to drop off forgotten meals, sneak forgotten or discarded cards and IDs back into his dad's wallet, and he'd found his dad's key ring so often that it was starting to feel like it was his now. Stiles didn't lose track of time so much as he found that the days blended together, so he couldn't say how long it'd been between when his mom was buried and the night the Hale house burned.

But he could tell you down to the minute when the family was rescued.

Coughing woke him up, bringing him to a seated position in the bed before he even fully registered that it wasn't him coughing. He fumbled for his lamp and then blinked to clear the spots from his eyes once it clicked on.

What he saw had him rubbing his eyes and pinching his arm. He hissed at the pain and then looked back up. Nope, a group of sooty people were still littering his room, some sitting on the floor while others stood protectively around them, most of them giving hacking coughs either way. His jaw dropped.

"What?" The gritty woman standing in front of him beat Stiles to the punch. "Where are we?"

" _Who_ are you?" Stiles corrected her, pushing himself back to where the side of his bed met the wall. "And what are you doing in my room at," he paused to check his alarm clock, "eleven pm? How did you get in?"

That was another question, because his dad always remembered to set the alarm even when he was drunk, and it wasn't going off now.

The woman didn't answer, instead pulling out a cracked cell phone from one of her pockets. She grimaced at it before turning back to him.

"I need to use your phone to call emergency services." With that she stalked from the room with only a cough or two more.

"For me or for you?" Stiles asked before realizing he wasn't going to get an answer. Sighing, he called out after her. "The closest one is in my dad's office down the hall to your right!"

From the corner of the room he watched as the others slowly caught their breath, but not without some lingering residual coughing. They probably needed some water. He chewed on his lip for a moment before pushing away from the wall and off the bed. They had plenty of glasses downstairs and maybe he could call his dad from the other phone line while he was there.

He carefully picked his way through the ashy covered people, squinting a little at the youngest as he did (was that Cora from last year's class?), and made it through the door while they were all reassuring each other that they were alive. 

Stiles made it all the way down the stairs and halfway to the kitchen before an impatient thudding came from the front door. All noises upstairs stopped and Stiles held his breath. A beat passed before the pounding knock came again, this time with a muffled call.

"Please! Let me in!" 

The man sounded desperate, but Stiles hesitated, not recognizing the voice. It could be a trap.

The grim woman was suddenly beside him looking hopeful before she smothered it with a frown. As she slowly and silently padded her way to the front door, Stiles held a hand to his chest to try and calm his racing heart. He hadn't heard her at all, not even the creaky step had warned him of her arrival.

She growled something indistinguishable and received a similar answer from the other side of the door as Stiles tried to figure out if she'd even said any words. Quickly, she flung the door open to reveal another ashy person, this one a young man. Stiles almost figured out why he looked familiar when the house alarm started beeping.

Immediately, he scrambled for the device, flipping it open and entering the code that he'd long since memorized in to stop the alarm. It wasn't until after the beeping stopped that it occurred to him that he should have let it keep going.

His hand slapped to his forehead just before sooty arms wrapped around him and picked him up. This is what I get, he thought as he struggled in that tight grip. All these strange people in the house and I turn off the alarm. Of course I'm going to get kidnapped.

But the man didn't start walking him out of the house, instead he just held him there, muttering something. It took Stiles a moment to figure out what his captor was saying.

"Thank you, thank you, thank you," he repeated over and over. 

Stiles blinked and then twisted his hand which was trapped up by his face to pat the man on the head awkwardly.

"You're welcome?"

"All of us are here except Laura and Derek. The fire department is on their way to our house, but I'd like to get an ambulance here if possible." The woman's voice was clear and confident causing both Stiles and his captor to focus on her once again. "What is your address?"

Stiles gave it automatically before his brain clicked in and added the obvious question to the end, "Wait, how did you get in my room without knowing where you were?"

"Because I lost them." His captor answered as the woman stalked back up the stairs to the phone. "I lost them and I knew you would _find them_."

His capt-, no, his soulmate grinned widely, white teeth standing out starkly against the soot smeared face and suddenly Stiles placed him.

"You were in the grocery store." His open mouthed shock slid into a frown. "Wait, if you knew to come here, you knew who I was! Why didn't you tell me!"

"I didn't find out your name until you lost your homework last year, actually," the man (his soulmate) clarified, finally releasing Stiles from the almost painfully tight hug. "And I stayed away because you're still growing up."

Stiles opened his mouth to protest, he was already in the double digits! Some of his classmates had known their soulmates for years now!

"I'm more than twice your age right now." He rolled his eyes in the face of Stiles' so-what glare. "Judging by your notes, you like researching as much as I do, so trust me when I say that I did mine and studies show that soulmates with an age gap such as ours do so much better when the younger of the two is at least in their late teens."

Easing his glare, Stiles looked away, fingers itching to find the same studies and verify it for himself. Unfortunately, there were a bunch of people he didn't know in his room and his dad recently reset his work computer's password and Stiles hadn't quite hacked it again yet.

Well, there was at least one answer he could try to get now.

"What's your name?"

The man smiled again and held out a hand.

"Peter!" Called the woman from upstairs. 

Stiles' soulmate sagged, eyes rolling in exasperation as he shut his mouth to frown before answering.

"Yes, sister dear?" Peter called back, saccharine sweet. He smiled down at Stiles' snicker.

"Come here and help me get everyone ready for the ambulance."

Peter's blue eyes flicked towards the stairs and then back to Stiles who made a shooing motion with his hands.

"Go, I'll go get them some water to drink."

He waited for Peter to head for the stairs and raised his brows when he saw the sooty man hesitate, a strange expression half hidden behind the ashes on his face.

"You know, if I hadn't seen your mother show you how to lose things I wouldn't have known how to lose my family fast enough to save them. You both have my thanks for this incredible gift." Peter's half smile smoothed into a full one as Stiles tried to blink back tears. He then turned and made his way up the stairs before Stiles could do more than sniffle and, as he wiped the tears from his eyes with his clean hand, Stiles was thankful for it.

He thought back to when his mom had taught him all about soulmates and lost items and let out a little watery laugh before heading for the kitchen once again. 

She really was incredible, wasn't she?

**Author's Note:**

> I know a lot of what I do in Teen Wolf is Steter and, to an extent, this is too, but please know that it isn't tagged with it because Stiles is far too young for a relationship and I'm not personally a fan of underage. So while it's implied that one day it will be Steter, know that in universe it's years and years away because literally every adult will put their foot down (with a good chance of Stiles defending this choice along with them due to _extensive research_ ) lol
> 
> Lost Things!Soulmate AU is a concept I fell in love with when I saw [Altiria's](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Altiria/pseuds/Altiria) [Drowning in Feathers](https://archiveofourown.org/works/26170948) which is, as usual, a delight! So if you like BNHA and HP crossovers, please give that a go!
> 
> Also, quick shout out (again) to [twothumbsandnostakeincannon](https://archiveofourown.org/users/somanyofthekids/pseuds/twothumbsandnostakeincanon) for [this post](https://twothumbsandnostakeincanon.tumblr.com/post/643430715823898624/soulmate-au) and tags which inspired two ideas, the other of which may get written later when I have the time


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